I am looking at cyclone dust collectors and the new Oneida V 2000 seems like and appealing combination of features and specs based on my needs. The most limiting requirement is that I have a height constraint of 88 inches. I definitely only want to do this once so the budget is “anything reasonable.” I have a pretty small shop and the longest run would be about 30 feet or so and I only operate one machine at a time.
They claim the V series is better at collecting fine dust than their Gorilla series even though the CFM is lower for the same HP. Anyone out there who has one of these?
Thanks
Chris
Replies
Chris,
I have the 3hp V-system from Onieda. It's only been installed for about a month and I am still working on connecting machines. Initially, I am very impressed but I've never had another DC or Cyclone before so i don't really have anything to judge against for comparison purposes.
I had a shipping issue with Onieda but everything was resolved within a few days. The product looks to be good quality and is what i expected. Fairly easy to install but the wall mount bracket doesn't offer any flexibility in the orientation for the filter.
Onieda tauts the unit as being "quiet" and if it is, then i definitely wouldn't have wanted to go with a louder unit. But, in all fairness to Onieda, My unit is mounted on the wall in an alcove so the sound just reverberates and comes out of the "cave". If the unit was free-standing it might not be as bad. And it still isn't lunchbox planer loud.
When i ran the head-loss calculations for the duct work i was pretty close to the limit for the 2hp system. Since i was close i thought it would be better to bump up to the next size for a few extra hundred bucks. i only wanted to do this once and the cyclone is only about half of the total system cost if you have any amount of ductwork and multiple drops.
Overall I'm happy.
ps. My shop is also on the rotation for the friendly weekend poker nights. My friends were impressed with the things the Onieda sucked up. Granted, at that point in the night they would have been impressed with just about anything...
Mike
Thanks Mike, I appreciate your thoughts. What was your head loss and what was your longest/worst leg of ducting? They don't seem to have a performance graph on the web site.I too would rather get the 3hp system but I am not sure it will fit as I only have 88 in of height and Oneida tells me that the 3hp is 89 in. They said I could shorten the flex hose that connects to the dust barrel but I wonder if the barrel would be hard to get out and in if I did that. Do you think I could reduce the height an inch or so that way?Thanks again.
Chris
Chris,
i'll need to see if i can dig up the calculations i have but i may have tossed them once i made the decision to go to the 3hp unit. I used the dust collection book by Sandor Naglyzinsky (SP??) to calculate everything.
My longest run now is about 25 feet by the time i go across the ceiling and halfway down the 10' wall to the point where I connect the flex hose. I'm rearranging my shop right now so i connected my lunchbox planer (Dewalt with the factory hood and a 4" port) at this point because it was convienant and because i wanted to see how the system would work. The last time I used the planner I couldn't detect that any chips or dust were not being picked up by the system. Not real scientific because there may be some fine dust escaping that i couldn't see but i was happy with the results.
The common advice to use as large a diameter pipe as possible seems to prove true. I can tell (by feel, no quantifiable measurements taken) that the run that has 5-inch pipe has less air flow then the run with 6-inch pipe for an equivelent run length.
As for clearence, I mounted mine on the wall as high as I could get it to the 10' ceiling. I wanted it to be compact in it's location because there is wood storage in the same area, etc. You do need some "give" in the flex hose but i would guess it would only be a half inch to an inch so the bin could be moved outfrom under the unit. It seems like you are pretty close to being able to make it work and for the extra $100 to go to the 3hp unit i woudl give Oneida a call and see if they can verify it would work.
I asked Oneida a number of times for the curves and they never sent them. I finally just plotted the point information they give on the Gorilla Series graphs to see how it compared.
Hope this helps. If you have any more questions feel free to ask.
Mike
Thanks Mike. I agree that for $100 I am highly inclined to go with the 3hp version, although that apparently only buys another 145cfm. Crystal at Oneida said I could easily take an inch out of the flex hose connection to the drum and make the height work but I wanted to ask someone who actually uses the machine if that seems reasonable. Did you have any trouble mounting the wall bracket? I am obviously going to have to get it in exactly the right place or everything will not fit.Another question - what sort of filters did you get and did you consider any other options? Seems to me the filter is pretty important in making sure the finest, nastiest dust does not get recirculated into the shop.Thanks.
Chris
Chris, I have the V series 3 hp also -- not much help for you because I just installed the cyclone and haven't finished the duct work yet. I think you can get the 1" you need by shortening the 7" flex hose to the drum -- but I am concerned about the installation with the wall mount. If you are right up against the overhead I think it will be difficult to install the wall mount as the motor sits on top of the wall mount bracket. You pretty much have to install the bracket first, it is a metal "shelf" that will be lag bolted or securely attached to the wall in some manner. Then you put the motor on top of it -- the motor is very heavy -- close to 70 lbs I think. You set the motor on the bracket, hold the blower plenum below it and then put in bolts that hold the plenum and are threaded into the motor. I mounted my wall bracket on the outside of my shop wall (to eliminate the need for any filter and keep the noise outside) and it is about 100" off the ground --- installing the motor that high was a task due to its weight and in your situation working with little or no clearance to the ceiling might be difficult -- I would discuss that with Onieda. It does move lots of air! I put a NASA and American Flag decal on my orange unit so the kids in the area think I have some sort of rocket on my building.
Thanks much for the installation tip/question. I will ask Oneida and think about it a bit. I did notice that the bracket was redesigned and based on the holes the motor appeared to go on top of it. Do you think it would be possible to mount the motor on the bracket and then screw the bracket on to the wall? I would be very interested to hear your impressions once you have the system up and running. Did you have Oneida design the duct work? Did you buy the parts from them?Great decorating ideas for the cyclone. I will have to do something similar - my kids will get a kick out of it.
Chris
I don't think you can mount the motor and blower plenum to the bracket and then mount it to the wall. I would have to go up to my shop and see if you would even have access to the mounting bolts -- but even if you did, the whole assembly I think would be too heavy and difficult to position and attach to the wall to assemble it prior to mounting. I think you can get all the installation instructions online from Onieda.
I was going to make the duct system out of PVC parts but after working with Onieda I was impressed with the support and ended up just getting everything from them -- it is on a truck somewhere at this time. I did a detailed sketch of my duct requirements (actually pretty simple) and they sent a CAD type drawing with all the parts and a price quote -- mine was about $500 which simplified my life and if I ever have any problems I feel they will stand behind it better knowing it is entirely engineered by them. Ed
Chris,
Regarding duct work. I had found some sources locally (within a few hours drive) for duct work and they were much cheaper the Oneida. I told the Oneida salesman this at the time i purchased the Cyclone. He still asked for my layout so they could design and qoute the ductwork. I told him i had no intentions of buying ductwork from them and i didn't want to waste their time. He said it was no problem and still asked for the layout.
The price they qouted was a shocker to me. I was expecting to spend about 2/3's of the amount they showed because i had priced other multiple sources online. In the end, I saved about 60% on duct work for comparable runs. (i divided the system into two phases so there wasn't apples to apples originally but i did go back and recalculate to make it similar to Oneida's design) But, i am a few parts and pieces short in what i bought and i have extra pieces i won't use. I think Oneida would have sent me everything i would possibly have needed and now i need to mail order a few misc parts. The convienance of having Oneida ship everything is probably worth it to some people. I'm cheap so i live with some inconveinance. (I also had to take a day off from work and spend about 5 hours in the truck driving to get parts. I needed to take a vacation day from my regular job anyways so it wasn't a big deal but if i figured the actual costs to me such as time away from work, gas, etc then Oneida would have been more competative)
I purchased from here http://www.blastgateco.com/ They will ship everything and i considered that but i also combined a few other stops on that side of the state (Detroit area of Michigan) so i had multiple reasons to drive. The website list prices for spiral pipe and fittings but they do have heavy gauge snaplock pipe and other less expensive fittings for "home shop" use. When i was there they had a number of orders that the guys were picking to send out on UPS. I'll probably give them a call for the other pieces i need and just have them ship them to me.
Mike
Thanks. That is one of the most useful links I have found here.
I can't take all the credit, someone else posted the link before. It's funny, they don't pop-up in many Google searches and i even had trouble finding them when i lost the link and knew they existed. If they did a better job of advertising i think they would have a lot more sales. I don't think they are the most tech savy company but their prices are great (less then $2/foot for 6" snaplock 26 guage pipe, less then $20 for most wyes, etc) and i was impressed with the customer service.
I just showed up at their door (it's a shop and not really a retail type place of business) and they helped me get all the stuff i needed and help me tweek a few things to help save money. They didn't have a few wyes that i needed and they shipped them within a few days.
My guess is that there are other places like this in most larger metropolitan areas, it is just that they aren't easy to find. So most of us who do this as a hobby end up going to the places that are easy to find on the web or who sell woodworking items.
Another one i looked at buying from was Kencraft. http://www.kencraftcompany.com/Dustindex.htm
I was going to split my order between Blast Gate and Kencraft but Blast Gate had the items i needed once i called them and went to their shop.
Mike
Thanks Mike. That is all very helpful.
Chris
Chris,
I think you would have trouble with the wall bracket and that little clearence. The other poster is correct in that the motor is pretty heavy. (I had my neighbor come over and "spot" me while i put it on the shelf. Where you might run into trouble is getting the shaft of the motor through the hole and then rotatating the motor into place. If you only have an inch or so of clearence you might not have enough room to rotate it through.
The motor is held in place with bolts through the plenum so pre-assembling the three pieces (mount, motor and exhaust plenum) would make for a pretty bulky, heavy and awkward piece to mount even if you can get at the mounting holes.
Another idea though would be to temporarily mount the motor to the mounting bracket. Get some big washers and run the mounting bolts through the mount and into the motor to hold it in place. Then lift the two pieces up in place and mount to the wall. you would definately want extra hands on this one but i think it could be done if you screwed a ledger board on the wall for the bottom of the bracket to rest on while you drilled holes and put in the lag bolts. Probably not recommended by Oneida but i think it could be done safely with thinking through the process before you get started.
Forgot the filter question... I just got the standard flter for the 3hp unit which i think is the spun-bonded filter. i consider the HEPA option but i needed to draw the line somewhere with what i was spending. If i get to the point where i need to replace the filter (few years? maybe never?) then i'd probably spring for the HEPA.
I did opt for the remote control and i think that is a good option given where my unit is located. At the time, Oneida was offering free remotes but i would have paid for one anyways.
I do have one design gripe about the unit. There doesn't seem to be a way to mount the regular switch unit. No bolt holes so it could be mounted to the wall, etc. Mine sits on top of the unit and i don't access it so it isn't a big deal but without the remote this would be an issue. Maybe one of the other owners could enlighten me about how i am supposed to mount the switch.
Mike
Edited 3/15/2009 9:05 am ET by mike_berr
Chris, Can't give you any specs on what you're planning but FWIW a bit on what I did on my Oneida install. I went with the 1.5hp unit w/the internal filter. I have a 12x25 basement shop so it seemed a good idea at the time. Longest run is approx. 20'. Ceiling height is about 86", so cut 5" out of the drum height. I butted the two halves together, split the cut-out section at an angle, and with glue and a strap clamp used it as a gusset to join the two halves together. Also had to shorten the flex hose by about half.
In hind-sight, the reduced capacity of the drum was something I was willing to live with. The biggest advantage of the length of the clear flex hose is a visual warning of a full drum. Ignore it too long and you can fill the whole cyclone with shavings. Don't ask me how I know. The internal filter seemed like a good space-saving idea at the time, but It's a real pain to clean. So, my dust collecting capacity has diminished over time.
To do it over, I would have cut an opening in the finished ceiling and raised the motor into the joist space above. 8" is 8". I would go with the external filter: it's bigger & more accessible for cleaning. CLEANING THE FILTER ON A REGULAR BASIS IS A MUST, if you want to maintain effecient suction
Despite it's shortcomings, there is no way I'd try to get along without my cyclone dust collector.
Paul
Mounting V-3000 on wall bracket
Mike, I am just installing my Oneida V-3000 on the wall bracket and I'm supprised at how far it needs to be shimmed from the wall for the filter to fit. Did you have any issue with mounting on the wall bracket? How much clearance between the wall and bracket did you use?
Jack
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